WotLK already has more active players than WoW Classic ever before – the highlights are yet to come

Wrath of the Lich King Classic started almost a month ago and it is already clear: There have never been as many active players as in WotLK in WoW Classic or The Burning Crusade Classic. So Wrath of the Lich King is already extremely successful, even though the real highlights of the expansion are still months away.

What happened? Wrath of the Lich King Classic launched on September 27, 2022. Apparently, that was enough time for many players to reach max level 80. Some have already attended a raid. This is also shown by the figures published by the ironforge.pro portal. More than 540,000 unique characters were in one of the 3 current raids in the last week.

This number is far above the average value determined over the entire duration of WoW Classic. Only in April 2020 could a similarly high value be measured. At this time, the troll raid “Zul’Gurub” opened its doors and almost 480,000 players set out to defeat the blood god “Hakkar the Soulflayer”.

In our WoW guide with 5 tips for level 80 you will learn how to best prepare for the raids in WotLK.

In the video you can see how crowded the ships were that left for the icy north at midnight on release day.

Since Blizzard does not provide any official information, the community has to help itself with its own tools

Are these figures reliable? The portal ironforge.pro uses data from in-game addons and balances them with data Warcraft logs and PvP leaderboards. This counts the number of unique characters that have participated in ranked arena games or raids over a period of time, typically a week.

However, these numbers do not represent the total amount of all players playing WoW Classic. However, one can still safely assume that there is a direct connection between the two values: the greater the number of players who actively participate in raids or PvP, the greater the total number of all players who play WoW Classic.

That’s why the numbers are a good sign: At no time have more players visited a raid than at the beginning of WotLK. So there are more people playing now than when TBC Classic started and during Classic. So the hype of WotLK is unbroken almost a month after the release. However, the next few weeks will have to show whether this trend will continue.

Unlike in Burning Crusade Classic, the achievement system could ensure that players in WotLK stay longer and continue to visit the raids even though they have already collected all relevant items. Some achievements in WoW are pretty tricky, and players with all achievements are the exception rather than the rule.

Highlights like Ulduar are yet to come

What’s next for WotLK? Things get really exciting when Ulduar or Icecrown Citadel is released. Ulduar is widely considered by the community to be one of the best raids ever created for World of Warcraft. The same goes for Icecrown Citadel. There it finally goes to the collar of Arthas, one of the greatest villains that Warcraft has ever produced. For many fans, the fight against the Lich King is the absolute highlight of the expansion.

It is therefore quite possible that more and more players will find their way to Northrend as WotLK Classic progresses. Because WotLK is one of the most popular expansions for WoW. The result of our survey was clear: 45 percent of you favor Wrath of the Lich King.

But it’s still a long time before we can measure ourselves against Arthas Menethil. Another villain is currently up to mischief in Azeroth: The Headless Horseman. A player has been trying to get a rare mount from this boss for years – finally found it but in the wrong game